Sunday, April 29, 2012

As if raising a four-year-old kid alone was not enough,
little Nikki had begun asking questions to her dad for which he had no answers.

“Daddy, everyone in school has two parents, why do I have
only one?”

As a response, Ravi would pass the bowl of cereals, on the
wooden dining table that doubles as a table for ironing the clothes of his
customers, to his daughter and snap.

“Eat your breakfast”.

The laundryman would be furious at his daughter for being so
questioning, and partly because he could not answer it, or rather because he
had been asking the same questions to himself for three years.

After he would drop her off at school, Ravi would realize
that none of this was the little girl’s fault and his anger would change into
compunction and sometimes, self-pity.

While his daughter would be in the school, pestered by the
fact that her father forgot to pack her lunch box again, Ravi would visit every
household of the community collecting clothes to be washed. He would wash and
hang the clothes out in his backyard before leaving to bring his daughter back
from school. After serving a meal of rice and potatoes and putting his child to
sleep, he would go to the nearby filling station at Malviya Nagar and work
there till 8:00pm. He would then come back home in a drunken state only to find
Nikki crying and throwing up all over the place being scared by something or the
other every day. He would then sober up, feed her and put her to sleep and end
his household chores by ironing the laundry and cleaning the utensils.
Sometimes, Shanti, the friendly neighbour, and her husband and Ravi’s friend, Kishore
would come to lull the child while Ravi was away at work. But they stopped
coming from a few months when Shanti herself became a mother of two. So Nikki
was left all alone for hours, to be on her own, just like she was, three years
ago.

*

Nikki was barely a year old when the unfortunate happened,
her mother left her, never to be seen again. It was when Ravi came home from
the petrol station that he found the house dark and empty and Nikki was sound
asleep on her bed. All that Nikki’s mother, Smriti, left for her husband was the
word “Sorry” written on a piece of paper and kept neatly near the sleeping
baby, beneath a bottle of milk. The wet paper could tell Ravi that maybe Smriti
had no choice but to leave, although he could not tell why, he could not tell
where.

As months passed by
and there was no news of Smriti, Ravi gave up searching for her presuming that
the paper was wet not because of her tears, but because of the warm bottle of
milk kept on it. As Smriti never returned, everyone in the neighbourhood
including Kishore named her a whore. There was no reason why Ravi would not
believe their words, as it had happened before in the neighbourhood that women
have left their husbands and kids, to live the rest of their lives as a kept
woman to a wealthy master.

Ravi had never expected this from his wife as theirs was a
love marriage, unlike others. He had left drinking for her and she had left her
village, Badarpur, for him. But, as everyone else quoted, bringing a village
girl to the big city of New Delhi was the mistake Ravi committed and so she
became lecherous awed by the city’s rich lot. When Smriti was gone for a year,
Ravi began believing their opinions to be true day-after-day. A rumor also
spread like fire that Smriti was seen with another man in a crowded Lajpat
Nagar market. Ravi did not know how much truth the rumor held, but he accepted
the fact that Smriti would never come back. He began boozing again, but only during
the late hours. He began working as a laundryman in the morning hours so that
money would not fall short to raise his child alone, since Smriti’s monthly
payment from the houses she had worked for as a maid, stopped inflowing. Sometimes
he would wake up at midnight to find himself trying to run away from the
shackles of responsibilities of being a father. He would think that it’s
because of Nikki that his family was broken now and he would think of her as a
jinx. While at other times he would just look at his sleeping child for hours
and hours, calling her a little angel now and then. He would say that Nikki will
never leave him alone, unlike Smriti.

Nikki was his reason to live, his treasure, and he was hers.
As another year went by without any news from Smriti, Ravi had begun to forget
about her and consider his as a family of two. He had become quite engrossed
with his works and his family and thoughts of Smriti had stopped bothering him.
Times were smooth, until Nikki started making friends in her school and brought
home nothing but questions about her mother. Nikki did not know who her mother
was, nor did she know if her mother was alive. All that she knew was that her
Daddy would not say anything about his wife. Eventually she stopped asking
questions, so did the neighbours. The rumors stopped too and no one saw or
heard of her again.

Smriti, unlike her
name, became a forgotten past.

***

Sipping the cup of tea I was offered, I was apprehensive
about what news awaited me. As I coughed out another drop of blood, doctor
Verma addressed me, “Smriti, where is your husband?”

“He could not come due to his work.’’ I lied.

“I take it that you haven’t yet told him about your
illness?”

I hung my head in shame in response to that.

It was then that the
doctor edified me about my illness- Cancer, it is.

“Of the lungs”, he added empathetically, “your prolonged
exposure to tobacco leaf dusts and asbestos in the tobacco factory, your father
worked in, might have resulted in your disease.”

I knew what was next; before he could say more, I asked ‘how
many more years do I get to live?”

“I am afraid, not even one.”

Appalled, I broke into tears and was about to run away, but
before I could, the doctor added, “listen Smriti, your disease has reached
stage 3B, now there is little that we can do, you need to undergo some
treatments to increase your life-expectancy.’’

This time, I did run away, I did not wait to hear what’s
next. I knew that to afford to live some more years I will need money, the one
thing we lack.

Bereaved, I walked back home as if in a trance, to attend to
the one-year old baby I had left asleep in the morning.

Nikki was still sound asleep while I wept, lying next to her.

I cogitated all day. I knew not how to gather the money for the
treatments. I knew not whether it was fair to waste so much money on myself,
just to live a few more years with my family, while my death was certain. If I
told Ravi, he would be hurt and he would work harder to garner the amount of
money. But it did not seem to me that I was worth the pain he would be prepared
to take for me. Ravi was already worried about Nikki’s school fees and the
endurance of a family of three in our combined salary; I could not burden him
with my responsibility. I cogitated all day but could think of no solution than
one.

It was around 8pm that I could put crying Nikki to sleep. I fought
back my tears and attempted to write Ravi a letter before leaving him and my
child forever. I picked up a pen, tore a piece of paper from the calendar and
sat down to write. But all I could write was the word “Sorry” before I broke down
into tears again.

Maybe it was the last time I would cry in this house, our
house. Or maybe it was the last time I
would shed a tear, ever.

That night, for the first time, I stopped thinking, I closed
the doors to my heart, I stopped crying, and no sense of shame could make me
rethink my decision. I walked out of the house I had once called ‘mine’. I watched
Ravi walk home, as I hid behind a tree to see him for the last time. As a tear rolled down my cheek, I dissented to
all pleas, of returning home, made by my heart. I had my mind made up.

That night, I walked; I knew not for how long, I knew not to
where, all I knew was that I walked and walked.

It seems like it’s been more than a day or two that I have
been walking. Maybe I have fainted at places, maybe it’s been just an hour, I
do not remember, I cannot recall. All I see now is yards and yards of blue water
in front of me. As I step into the river, I can feel its lucidity. The Yamuna,
that I once called ‘dirty’, seems to be so pure and clear today. I step in
further, farther than I had ever been. I breathe in the river, more and more. As
I let the sacred water imbue me, I can feel it pardon my mortal sin, the sin
that I commit today. Memories, memories
of yesterday reflect in front of my eyes. A clear view, a view of blue, appears
in front of me. I blend with the Yamuna. I reconcile my hereafter. And I,
unlike my name, seek the great oblivion.

Goodreads

I cannot, or rather will not judge a book that touches the strings of my heart and leaves me half-crying and half-contemplating about my own meaningless existence in this vast universe.

The kind of story that makes you want to question the laws of nature, that's heart-ending and beautiful and that makes you irrevocably fall in love with the story and the characters. And you all you want to do is pray for the characters who are left behind to leave a life of mourning and misery and that's when you realize it's just a work of fiction. But not really, because fictions are realities we don't think of, that are happening to people we know nothing about.